Root beer floats — A’s sink below .500

On rainy days in January, always like to dream of Root Beer Float Day — great weather, taking a day off during the week, big crowd with lots of day-campers in colorful t-shirts. Got my mug scooped by Melanie Embree. The longest line, by far, was for Rickey Henderson’s autograph.

When your team is going bad, the wrong guy always seems to be at the plate. Today it was Wes Bankston, who went 0 for 5, making outs four times when the A’s had runners in scoring position. (To be fair, he hit a line drive in the ninth.) After a hot start, he’s 0 for 19 and hitting .207. First base right now is even weaker than third. Painful.

Hey, but how about Brad Ziegler? He induced three double play balls in extending his streak to 30 scoreless innings. People who swear by BABIP say he’s been lucky, and he has been somewhat, but isn’t inducing ground balls a legitimate skill, particularly for a submariner?